Saturday, September 8, 2012

Who's got the enthusiasm gap?

President Barack Obama's acceptance speech on Thursday night drew the largest television audience of this year's political conventions and ranked as the biggest political moment ever on social media site Twitter.

More than 35.7 million people tuned in on three broadcast and 10 cable networks to watch Obama accept the Democrats' nomination for president, according to Nielsen ratings data...

For Republican challenger Mitt Romney's speech last week, 30.3 million people watched on television.

On social media, the number of tweets about the Democratic convention blew away similar figures from the Republican National Convention a week earlier...

The president's speech prompted 52,756 tweets per minute just after it ended, a new record according to Twitter.

The peak tweets per minute, following some of Obama's most memorable lines, exceeded all other moments for any speaker during either the Democratic or Republican conventions...

On Facebook, Obama's address generated the most mentions from either convention and was 40 percent higher than the second-biggest moment, former President Bill Clinton's remarks. Romney's speech ranked fourth among most-mentioned convention events on Facebook.

In hockey I believe that would be called a "hat trick" and in baseball a "grand slam."

But of course with President Obama, the best analogy would be to say that heading into the 4th quarter, he just sunk a 3-pointer.

in which a Nielson rating over 20% seems to be a leading indicator of a bounce. I'm not sure how they calculate the percentage. Obama had about 7% more viewers four years ago and still didn't quite make 20%, while McCain had about 25% more viewers four years ago than Romney this time. But the point is he got a lot more exposure than Romney so that could lead to a bump.

Smartypants, a really good post. I just loved the convention. I was glued to C-Span for coverage without commericals and stupid talking heads. And to TOD's for comments. couldn't keep up with Twitter. Wonderful 3 days.